Kurt Vonnegut explains Republicans

[Xavier_Onassis]

Here’s a morsel from the early section of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (or Pearls Before Swine) published in 1965:

…the folly of the Founding Fathers… those sadly recent ancestors [was that they ] had not made it the law of the Utopia that the wealth of each citizen should be limited. This oversight was engendered by a weak kneed sympathy for those who loved expensive things, and by feeling that he continent was so vast and valuable, and the population so thin and enterprising, that no third, no matter how fast he stole, could more than mildly inconvenience anyone.

Noah and a few like him perceived that the continent was indeed finite, and that venal office holders, legislators in particular could be persuaded to toss up great hunks of it for grabs, and to toss them in such a way as have them where Noah and his kind were standing.Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest and industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked for a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American Dream went belly up. turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited , filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.

E Pluribus Unum is surely an ironic motto to inscribe on the currency of this Utopia gone bust, for every grotesquely rich American represents property, privileges, and pleasure that have been denied the many.An even more interactive motto, in light of the history made by the Noah Rosewaters, might be: Grab much too much, or you’ll get nothing at all.

Written in 1965, people!

[BT]

If, as you say, the GOP is the party of the rich and comfortable, then to stay in power they need more and more people to become rich and comfortable and support them. If the Democrats are the party of the poor and downtrodden, then to stay in power they need more and more people to become poor and downtrodden and dependent on the Democrats.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Republicans are indeed the party of the Oligarchy, but they do not want to share their power with an actual majority of like individuals: what they want i8s a willing crown of lumpenproletarians who errroneously believe that they will someday be Donald Trump or Mitt Romney, but in reality are never going to rise above the rank of a guy like Joe the Plumber, who, let us note, has still not bought out his boss, still has not come close to earning $250K per year and who, in fact, has left plumbing, written a book of his rather shaky economic theories, denounced John McCain who made him famous, and is running for office and will lose.

The Democrats have a few members of the oligarchy as well, but essentially they, by and large, are people who want progress and fairness and a true equal opportunity for everyone. Don't be an ass: no wants to be poor and downtrodden.

And as for Vonnegut: he had the Oligarchy nailed in 1965 and it is still the same.

[Plane]

  What is the upper limit that would be proper for a persons wealth?

   What would a young Jacob Astor do with the rest of his life if he acheived this limit early in his life?

[Xavier_Onassis]

What would a young Jacob Astor do with the rest of his life if he acheived this limit early in his life?

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I imagine that he could simply enjoy life more comfortably.

He could seek God's favor by building a synagogue. He could write "How to get rich in beaver pelts and extortion."

Why would he need to be given some special task, anyway?

[Plane]

If Jacob Astor had been limited in the fortune that he could gather his remarkable energy and sagasity would have been wasted.

His shipping business grew to benefit everyone who needed freight moved , can we assume that that freight would have been moved without him?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Astor

I just reviewed his thumbnail bio.
He was not an angel, but even so he was a great builder, and most of what he built was needed.

Putting a ceiling on his aquisitions would not have made an angel of him , it would have wasted a lot of his time, and channelled more of his energy into his illeagal side.

[Xavier_Onassis]

John Jacob Astor was a frigging bandit. He exploited mountain men and Indians and made a fortune smuggling opium. When he got older, apparently he tried to make up for his vile behavior with good works.

I actually do not give a crap about what might have happened to him. He was just another opportunist and despoiler of resources and his fellow man.

[Plane]

   So you don't consider his role to have been necessacery to the rest of his society?

    China is a grand experiment, for several decades they expressly limited the amount a person could amass fortune, the result was almost a permanant famine.

   Soon after they allowed the acrual of millions , they started experiencing a steadyly growing economy.

    Most millionaires are productive, and serve a vital role in society, even if they don't want to.     

[Xavier_Onassis]

If you accept that it is necessary for thousands of Chinese to become opium addicts for Astor to make his fortune, AND you accept that Astor was so talented and unique that there would not have sprung up someone else who would have done the same without exterminating beavers and addicting thousands of Chinese, then you might be right.

It is like accepting that slavery was necessary for the US to become what it is today. You have to weigh the bad with the good.

[Plane]

  Yes, I think you could make a good case for that.

  But there have been many attempts to create ideal societys , including some with strict limits on personal property.

  It seems easy to make this sound good , but impossible to make it work.

  After an experiment has been completed , it is unscientific to reject the results.

The social order of Britain and the social order of the US  are the result of long evolution.

It is hard to beat evolution as a means of exploring and developing alternatives.

[Xavier_Onassis]

There are certainly better functioning countries than the US. Canada, for one. New Zealand, for another.

Evolution is a haphazard, hit-or-miss chaotic process that really does not function as well as something though out in a logical manner. The US Constitution was certainly an improvement on what the Brits had in the 1700's The British society up to WWI was a caste system almost as rigid and dysfunctional as that of India.

The idea of a constitution grew out of the French enlightenment. British philosophers like John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham had a lot of influence as well, as well as the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederation.

[Plane]

Evolution is not hit or miss.

It is Miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, Hit!

Every possibility gets tried, with a trend twards success.

Misses get forgotten and retried, but successes get retryed immediately.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Evolution is indeed hit or miss. The hits survive the misses go extinct.  The point is that it is not a reasoned process. And no, not every possibility is tried. Many mutations occur, mostly at random.


To develop something to be as good as it possibly can be is NOT the same as to simply develop something that can survive and reproduce.

For years, carmakers simply put turnsignals just anywhere. The location was more a matter of styling than anything else. No one commented on this except Consumers Reports.

Then someone thought up putting a turn signal on the mirrors. It was an obvious improvement and now has become practically standard.

Evolution leads to survival. Thoughtful development aims for perfection.
That is the difference.

Evolution has resulted in 86% righthanded and 14% left handed, I believe I read. Both the left handed and the righthanded survive. What would be best, if you reason it out?

Neither.

We would be more efficient if we were all ambidextrous.

It does not appear that evolution is likely to result in this happening.

[Plane]

How do you know that ambidexterity is better than left or right handedness?

There might be an advantage in specialiseing a hand that is not obvious , perhaps even too stubtle for anyone present to explain.

This would not matter to evolution , if an advantage is possible it does not have to be understood first, it gets tried in the maqnner of an experiment.

  Thinking through a complex system with a lot of interrelated parts is difficult , when there are a lot of parts that all affect each other it can actually become absolutely unpredictable.

   Evolution over long periods of time is more appropriate for the development of human society than is carefull foresight, no human is going to have the brainpower to understand large numbers of human interelations. You would have to be God to plan a social order.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Evolution over long periods of time is more appropriate for the development of human society than is carefull foresight, no human is going to have the brainpower to understand large numbers of human interelations. You would have to be God to plan a social order.
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That is dumb. There is no nation on this planet that does not have many aspects of its social order planned.
Plato planned a social order, and hundreds more have done it.

The reason it does not work is that a totally planned social order causes stagnation and boredom and is a barrier to innovation. This is what happened in India and in Europe in the Middle Ages. The Muslim World was a stagnant society with very clear guidelines for centuries, and only the discovery of oil and the resulting intrusion of the West with Western ideas have disrupted it, much to the dismay of the traditionalists.

Humans do not live in a perfect climate. Where they have come close to doing so, they have overpopulated to a point where other problems have arisen.

But I was not talking about political systems. I was discussing the superiority of a well-thought out design over an evolved design that reaches the level of survival and goes no further.

I think we can argue that baboons are a better design than lions, for example, because baboons are nowhere near being endangered.  Humans are a better design than Mountain gorillas, because we are more adaptable.

I see no reason to conclude that being right handed is a better design than being left
handed, despite the 86%/14% figure, and that being ambidextrous is not superior to either. Evolution is not a process that leads to perfection. To say that there is some mysterious reason that is to subtle to understand is a copout as I see it, like some priest saying that we do not understand the subtle reasons why a loving God would inflict disgusting things like malaria and Guinea worm on those he presumably loves.


I did not say that perfection was always attainable, but it is certainly a worthwhile goal. Evolution obviously does not strive for perfection.

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By the way, if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then God could easily plan a perfect social order. The religions that all claim that they have received God's plans do not seem to have ever come close to any sort of perfection.